"I don't hate you."
The admission surprised them both. It sat on the table between the coffee cups like a small animal neither wanted to startle.
"I hate what you did," he clarified. "I hate that the two people I trusted most made a private world that required my absence to survive. I hate that I came home wanting to surprise you and got surprised instead. But hate you — no. That would be easier. This is harder."
Angela reached across the table. He let her take his hand. Her fingers were warm. Her rings were the same rings. "Harder is honest," she said. "I'll take honest."
Spring thawed the suburbs into mud and early green. Jamal, back stateside for a longer stretch between assignments, rented a small apartment near the base rather than returning to Angela's guest room or Rhea's forever hospitality. The apartment had beige walls and a balcony that overlooked a parking lot. He bought a gray armchair because the sectional at his mother's house still lived in his nervous system. He cooked simple meals. He called Angela on Sundays. Sometimes the calls were ten minutes. Sometimes they were an hour. He learned the weather of her voice again — when she was tired, when she was lonely, when she was choosing not to say Daryl's name and when the effort of not saying it made the silence louder.
One Sunday she said, "He asked if he could apologize to you in person. I told him that was not my permission to give."
"Thank you."
"Do you want him to?"
Jamal looked out at the parking lot. A kid on a scooter wobbled past a row of sedans. "Not yet. Maybe not ever. Apologies are for people who still share a future. I'm not sure he and I do."
"All right."